EGYPT

22^nd February – 6^th March

EXTREMELY CAIRO

 

I like flying at night. Maybe it’s the sensation of floating majestically through the outer reaches of the solar system; maybe it’s because there’s no horizon, only a seamless black vault where what you see as you look down is a continuation of the night sky with its dark wells, its lone stars, its occasional clusters and its shimmering constellations. Tonight, having performed all the anal calculations I could dream up like the number of hours elapsed since we’d last slept seriously (41), time differences (WA time minus 6 hours) and how many times the brat behind me had kicked my seat (roughly 10 to the power of 7), I found myself dreaming out the window this was the starship Enterprise travelling at warp speed through the Zark Quadrant. It wasn’t too far from the mark – our fellow travellers were exotic creatures, time was fluid and we were completely warped with exhaustion.

I’m sure anyone watching our 737-500 from the outside would have seen it lurching through the air and bucking around like a panel van at Lover’s Leap. No sooner had we left the ground in Jeddah than the cabin exploded into hyperactivity again. Everyone behaved like they’d never flown before and had absolutely no idea of flight etiquette. The grown-ups jumped up and down, wrestled with their parcels, yelled conversations from one end of the aircraft to the other; the kids fought, cried, screamed and threw food at each other. It all made our brains sore.

Then, as we slid into the first few metres of our descent well to the south-east of Cairo, a sudden transformation took place. The adults rounded up their kids and returned to their seats and within minutes an eerie hush settled over the cabin.

It had lately rained in Cairo and our first glimpses of the city came blinking up at us as we descended through streaky cloud. We were already over the outskirts of an immense galaxy of lights, which expanded in all directions as we drifted towards its centre. On final approach the cubist buildings and rain-glossed streets resembled a complex electrical circuit, an impression of order and efficiency soon to be dispelled by the chaotic reality of Africa’s largest city.

The cabin remained silent. We cleared the airport perimeter fence, the plane shuddered and groaned, the wheels hit the runway, the engines roared as the captain slammed on full reverse thrust. The engine noise and cabin rattle subsided and the passengers erupted in spontaneous applause, cheering and whistling like the penultimate scene in a disaster movie. It was clear they’d all been terrified the whole time and were mightily relieved to be alive. It might have been faintly engaging had we not been all but weeping with fatigue.

Something must have been lost in the translation of the announcement to remain seated until the aircraft came to a complete stop because everyone interpreted it as an invitation to immediately leap out of their seats and start hauling their stuff down from the overhead lockers. They were back to themselves again and everybody had to be the first off. The hostess flew out of her bunker and gave them such a serve they daren’t do anything but obey her and, like chastened schoolkids, sit back down until the plane was properly parked. I was wishing I’d bought my very own teddy bear.

Tess and I were last off the plane and last off the tarmac bus. Spooked by KL into expecting the worst we’d practically convinced ourselves we’d be finding our own way to the hotel, a prospect neither of us relished. A pair of zombies, we were chronically jet-lagged and beyond tired, and this was Cairo for chrissake. We’d indeed landed on a weird planet.

 

*

 

“That is the statue of Rameses the second,” Motas explained in impeccable English as we took the flyover on the way in from the airport. It was getting on for 9pm. We’d passed through the outlying districts of Heliopolis and Abbassiya on the relatively new 26^th July Expressway which would take us all the way in to central Cairo, across the Tahir Bridge to Gezirah – an isle in the Nile – and on to our hotel which, according to the publicity shots, rose like a cylindrical cheese grater on the island’s southern tip.

Too shattered for the moment to marvel at the juxtaposition of one thousand two hundred and something BC with the 26^th July whenever it was, I watched the twenty metre tall monument, lit from below for maximum impact, waft by at eye level.

“It was moved here at huge expense some years ago,” Motas added. Of course, he was more informative than that, but I was too addled to take in the details of his commentary.

“…There is not much traffic,” Ahmood was saying, “We have a good run.” No sooner had he uttered the words than the steady flow of cars that had whizzed past us on the expressway congealed on the approach to Tahir Bridge. If this was light traffic I was in no hurry to see peak hour.

Ahmood had been waiting for us just inside the terminal, holding a card with our names on it. The card was superfluous, we were the only Anglos in the arrival hall. The sound of his voice was so welcome I would happily have had his children. Thin, dark, with a twenty four hour five o’clock shadow and halitosis that could wilt lettuce at ten paces, he steered us through the immigration formalities and escorted us to a white minibus parked miles away in a dark corner of the ill-lit carpark. There he introduced Motas, who was now steering us towards the El Gezirah, which at night looked like a cheese grater with a globe in it.

As we crossed Tahir Ahmood went over the arrangements for tomorrow. We’d lost our recovery day so we were expected in the lobby at 7.30am when he would drive us to the Egyptian Museum for the official start of our tour – ready or not. Most likely not.

Ahmood handled check-in, we just went through the motions. Alone at last in our 12^th floor room we had just enough energy to sink a room service beer each, pop a sleeping pill and crawl into our single beds. Deeply wired, I had to take a second pill three hours later and finally passed out minutes before the phone rang at 6 with our wake up call.

 

*

 

“In the morning you will see the Pyramids out there,” the bellhop had promised last night as he’d shown us the balcony. Desperate to rest, we’d tipped him and hurried him out the door but now, bone-weary and eager not to miss a minute, I hopped out of bed in a state of high anticipation and threw the curtains open with a flourish. Far from peering back through the mists of time to the golden age of the Old Kingdom we stared instead into a wall of dense grey smog that limited visibility to barely a kilometre in any direction. It was too early to tell if the bellhop’s claim was a wild exaggeration; the sky was heavy and the air still – perhaps it was just an unfortunate conjunction of atmospheric conditions and we’d see the Pyramids tomorrow morning.

So much for those romantic images of the mighty blue Nile, bathed in clear sunlight, flowing majestically between avenues of gently waving date palms and dotted with lazily tacking feluccas. Of course, cities never do justice to their great waterways and we should have been prepared for a more gritty reality. Not to put too fine a point on it, the Nile looked like an open sewer. Shit-brown and oil-streaked, it was already ahum with motor boats and scarred white with ferry wakes. The only feluccas were moored, their grimy sails furled, amongst the debris floating along the slimy embankments. The brown and grey buildings and the choking streets of downtown Cairo receded rapidly into the miasma on either bank.

Affable Motas was on time to meet us in the lobby but Ahmood was nowhere to be seen. A shade portly, Motas would have been in his mid-fifties and took great pride in his appearance without being vain. His moustache was neatly clipped and he wore a grey suit, white shirt and a thin black tie. As we waited for Ahmood he cleaned his fingernails with the small penknife on his keyring. We entertained him with the story of the fiasco in KL and our contretemps in Jeddah. “The Saudis must have been in a good mood. Usually they will take your alcohol and pour it down the drain,” he said. He was too diplomatic to add that they might also have suspended us upside down from a ceiling fan and whipped us with steel cables.

When Ahmood hadn’t shown by 8 Motas took the initiative and loaded us into the minibus for the trip to the Egyptian Museum.

During their conquest of Egypt in the AD640s the Arabs pitched a military camp on the outskirts of a settlement that evolved into modern Cairo. The outskirts of modern Cairo are still a military camp, but nobody could call it a settlement. It’s hard to credit that a century ago less than half a million people lived here; these days you can see that number any time of day on Tahir Bridge, such as now.

To put things into perspective: subtract the population of Melbourne from the population of Australia and you arrive at the current population of Cairo, give or take a few mill. Approximately half of them were between the El Gezirah and the Egyptian Museum this morning, an overwhelming experience for this pair of country bumpkins. It took forty minutes to cover two kilometres. The streets, basted with a deep chocolate sludge, were a cardiac nightmare. An endless tide of battered, locally built Renault 12s – they have a 2-speed gearbox: overdrive and gridlock – flushed into the vortex of Tahir from every direction. It was a frantic, homicidal duel for position in the two lanes crossing the bleak bridge from our side. Most of these maniacs would have been gaoled in Perth. The silly thought passed through my head that here were the people who gave us our numerical system and yet they couldn’t grasp that six lanes don’t go into two without a lot of crunching. There wasn’t a straight body panel in sight.

The other eight million Cairenes were waiting for us in the museum carpark, along with about half a million tourists. Motas disappeared for a few minutes and returned with the diminutive Reba, whom he introduced as our guide for the day. Probably in her late twenties, Reba made Abdul from Jeddah look tall. She was smartly dressed and dripping with chunky jewellery and even though this was only our first mad morning in Egypt I’d already seen enough to deduce she came from a well-to-do family. Her most important characteristic for our purposes was her speech, which spilled from her cherry-red lips like a tape recorder on fast forward. Motas remained with the car while we three sallied off for round 1 of what would become a gruelling test of stamina for Tess and I.

The museum was packed, and apart from the sheer weight of numbers the noise stunned my already brittle senses. I’d assumed a studious, murmuring atmosphere in this venerable institution as awestruck visitors stood reverently before the rare splendours of Ancient Egypt. Instead, it was more like a World Cup football crowd. Hundreds of tour guides waved little coloured flags for the attention of their groups and competed for bandwidth in a babel of languages. Some groups wore coloured caps and here and there were clusters of yellow heads or orange heads pecking for position around a display like anti-bodies attacking an invader. The resonances and reverberations through the long, deep building curdled our brains and we barely caught a word of Reba’s overdriven commentary on the fragment of the Rosetta Stone at the entrance.

The moment she finished Reba dived off into the press of jostling bodies. We elbowed our way after her as best we could and eventually spied her tapping her foot beside the next item on her agenda. No sooner did we lurch up than she reeled off her speech and raced away again. It’s an indication of how wrong my head was that I began to wonder if she wasn’t trying to lose us; she was the only guide without a little coloured flag and, at about 4’2”, she was readily lost in the legions of Japanese tourists.

Call me bloody-minded but I wasn’t going to make it easy for her. In the process of keeping her on my radar, however, many of the really interesting exhibits spooled through my peripheral vision like scenery from the window of a speeding train. Tess and I made a pact to return as free agents before we left Cairo.

We covered the lower galleries in possibly world record time and took a break outside in the cool sun for a fag and a bag of nuts. It was our first opportunity to appreciate the elegant facade of the museum. I had Reba take a photo of us beside a granite sphinx thing, the first of what would eventually become a library of nearly 1500 snaps for The Awfully Big Adventure Coffee Table Edition.

Upstairs, a sea of souls shuffled around King Tut’s room. It was oppressively close and triggered a mild claustrophobia seasoned with a pinch of paranoia. With bodies brushing, rubbing, pushing and squeezing against me my arms took on a life of their own, reaching round compulsively to check the zippers on the daypack. I caught myself doing the A-level breathing I’d learned in pre-natal classes all those years ago, only now it was definitely not in the attempt to become one with the rhythms of the cosmos. I was controlling the urge to strike out and throttle the next bastard who invaded my space.

The next bastard who invaded my space was Ahmood. His gaunt, stubbled face loomed out of the throng. A thousand grovelling apologies, but he had worked till 3am and so missed our appointment at the El Gezirah – that was his story anyway. He was here to confirm our arrangements for tomorrow morning when we would fly to Luxor to join the cruise. Lucky he was on the ball because our whole beings were focussed on surviving the next minute, the next hour, the day with Reba the pocket rocket.

“Reba, she is a good guide…yes,” Ahmood said. It wasn’t a question.

“Great if you like orienteering in a stock exchange,” I said. Well it was on the tip of my tongue but I was too tired to argue. “Yes,” I lied. We synchronised watches with him and he melted into the crowd.

Needless to say, we couldn’t remember a thing we’d seen as we burst out of the building an hour or so later. My personal souvenirs of the visit were a neurotic tic and a head full of kaleidoscopic impressions of Reba darting hither and thither trying to escape. Only the residents of Chernobyl would call Cairo’s air fresh but we stood on the steps gulping lungsful of it to flush out the staleness of the museum and try to clear our heads for Round 2.

 

*

During the Byzantine era (AD300s to the 1400s) the Copts emerged as the main Christian sect in Egypt and as far as Christianity goes they’re now the only game in town. If you thought the Vatican was out of touch with the twentieth century, these guys have trouble keeping up with the Middle Ages. Their language is a blend of ancient Egyptian and ancient Greek and survives in the liturgy of their Orthodox Church, which also involves a lot of solemn chanting, wearing improbable hats and burning incense. The Copts have naming rights to the poorest quarter of Cairo and it was to this ghetto that Motas drove us from the museum.

Along the way, and for no apparent reason save we’d noticed several pairs of teenage girls wandering along the crowded sidewalks holding hands, Reba took it upon herself to explain the Muslim Rules of Engagement for the sexes. Basically, there isn’t any – engagement, that is.

“If you see a girl holding hands with a boy it is because they are married, he must be her husband. Unmarried girls who hold hands with boys are…” She left us to fill in the blanks as her voice trailed off in a coy giggle.

“So, young girls who hold hands are not, um…” Motas chimed in, but couldn’t bring himself to finish his sentence either. “It is their way of showing they are single. Young boys hold hands too.”

“How do boys and girls meet then?” I asked, already knowing the answer but wanting to hear it from Arab lips.

“It is arranged between the families,” Reba went on, “Sometimes when they are babies.”

“And how do they court, you know, become friends?”

“They are allowed to go out only with a relative…” Reba began. Then, as suddenly as she had brought the subject up she tired of it and looked to Motas.

“A chaperone,” he chuckled, his eyes habitually swivelling from the road to the side mirrors to the rear-view mirror and back to the road. “Someone from the girl’s family must go with them to make sure they do not touch. Usually it will be her older brother if she has one, or a senior family member. They must stay at least an arm’s length apart…”

Our lesson in sexual etiquette fizzled out as Motas concentrated on negotiating the traffic, now complicated by the fact that the narrow cobbled streets of the Coptic Quarter were clogged with horses and carts. Perhaps that’s too grand a description of them; they were flat-decked drays on rickety wooded wheels, laden with vegetables or sacks of spice and harnessed to emaciated beasts that called to mind Boxer from Orwell’s Animal Farm. Most just plodded along at their own painful pace, slipping now and then on the shiny cobbles or in the slimy green gutters, entirely beyond the indignity of responding to the desultory flick of a driver’s whip. Our window was down and the thick stench of rotting organic matter, horse shit and human waste almost overpowered us.

Motas found a parking spot near the metro. We piled out feeling strangely invigorated, another squirt of adrenaline perhaps. Reba soon knocked that nonsense out of us.

We left Motas with the car and proceeded apace to the Hanging Church, so-named not because it was ever a gallows but because it was built over the ruins of a Roman fortress. Once our eyes had accustomed to the gloom we could admire the fine ancient wooden screens ornately carved and inlaid with pearl. Reba motioned us over to a barred window which gave out over a courtyard of sorts enclosed on all sides by steep walls.

“It is said that down there Moses was discovered in the bulrushes,” she informed us. “The Nile has changed its course since then but the church was built here to mark the place.” We peered obediently through the bars, craning to see the hallowed site, expecting to see a token of its significance. Instead of a flashing neon sign, however, all we could discern were two battered and rusting 44 gallon drums lying a foot deep in vivid green sludge. If Moses washed up here today he’d die quick smart from toxic shock. I think Reba made that one up.

Next, we sprinted to the Church of the Holy Family. Legend has it that the family in question hid out in a damp cave beneath the building for three months during the Herodian purges. They could’ve done worse, at least it was handy to the metro.

Finally, we raced through a maze of dank alleyways where ragged people lived in holes in the wall to a synagogue, the only one in Cairo I believe. Reba pointed out an inscription etched above the door but delivered her spiel so quickly that its significance escaped us. I’d glazed over again and couldn’t have cared less if Abraham himself had scratched “I love Sarah” there. I’d reached the point where I desperately desired but four things: a breath of fresh carbon monoxide, some food, a gawp at the Pyramids and 48 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Motas whisked us, as much as it is possible to whisk in Cairo, to a restaurant on the Giza Road. The moment we bundled out of the van we were assailed by a band of traditional musicians so old they may have entertained Rameses himself. Before we knew what was happening we were serenaded into parting with our camera and 5 Egyptian pounds for a photograph with the wizened piper on the restaurant steps. I couldn’t wait to see the expression on my face when the prints came back.

The place was packed and flyblown. The three of us – Motas remained with the car as usual – climbed over a dozen diners to snare a seat in the far corner. My appetite deserted me as I watched the stained waiters carrying fly-specked plates to the surrounding tables. I forced myself to order the grilled sea bass anyway. It arrived whole and although it was surprisingly delicious I could only manage a few half-hearted mouthfuls washed down with a Stella, the local beer in no way related to the Stella of Artois fame.

Mildly refreshed, we re-bussed under the impression our next stop would be the Pyramids. Alas, Motas swerved to a halt outside a papyrus shop a few kilometres up the road. We were reluctant to go in at first but took the plunge despite ourselves on the off chance we might pick up something for the kids. The work was well executed but not really to our taste – ok, it was tatt – and besides, we’d have had trouble squeezing it into our packs. What did engage us, though, was the demonstration of how papyrus is made. We were fascinated with a process which takes about two weeks to produce a single sheet, not least with the fact that all those centuries ago someone actually thought “I know, let’s make paper out of this fibrous plant,” and then worked out how to control the sugar content into the bargain.

“There, see them?” Motas pointed to the tops of the Pyramids at last looming above the ramshackle streetscape of Giza Road. I might have been surviving on adrenaline but you’d have to be dead not to experience a frisson of excitement at clapping your eyes on those mysterious monuments for the first time. Tess wriggled with anticipation.

Theories abound as to why the pyramid so absorbed the Egyptian imagination, but while their creation myth had the first land rising from the sea in the shape of a pyramid it was probably less of a mystical thing than practical.

Pre-dynastic graves were originally marked with a cairn of stones which protected the bodies from scavengers. The ancients believed that if the bodies were disturbed then the soul could not live on forever in the afterlife. The piles got bigger as families were buried together in large plots. Inevitably, it became a status thing to have the biggest pile of stones on the block. Eventually the great architect Amenhotep worked out that by laying the stones in a certain pattern you could construct a really big pile. He tested his theory in the original step pyramid of Zoser nearly five thousand years ago. The art reached its zenith with the Great Pyramid of Cheops, which retired undefeated as the biggest pile of them all.

We joined a stately procession of tour buses up onto the plateau and pulled up in the parking area facing Cheops. Reba slotted in her mental tape and reeled off the sing-song statistics: over two million stone blocks, each weighing more than two tons…blahblahblahtyblah. Much to our annoyance she replayed it in case we missed something. I longed to miss her voice.

Just when I thought she’d finished and we were about to go inside the pyramid she turned to us and said, “The admission price is not included in your tour. If you wish to see inside you can buy your tickets over at that little office.” This was news to us and Tess spoke up

“That was not made clear in your brochure Reba,” she said.

“I am sorry but it is so.” It may have been my fragile state of mind but I wanted to strangle her with her gold necklace.

“Then I will complain to the tour office when I get back to Australia.” She wouldn’t of course, but it gave Tess the small satisfaction of threatening Reba.

 We swatted off child hawkers as we wandered over to the ticket office. The hawkers are such a nuisance here that special police patrol the plateau on camels to protect visitors. They are more pestiferous than Asian hawkers who are civilized enough to take no for an answer and know when to beat a tactical retreat…after only three hours or so. I know all that stuff about grinding poverty but we were well past carrying the White Man’s burden today – we were flat out carrying our day packs. I looked up our otherwise useless phrase book to find imshi – trans. “go away”; we uttered it through clenched teeth in a tone that unmistakeably translated as “Piss off!” They didn’t, but at least we were temporarily rid of the infernal Reba.

We bought tickets to Cephren, the second pyramid, and descended with a handful of other tourists into a narrow corridor. We’d not penetrated a few metres when the low ceiling forced us into a crouch. Low wattage bulbs illuminated the passage just enough to see our way but not to make out anything on the walls – for all we know they were blank. The air was humid and heavy and Tess, who enjoys enclosed spaces as much as drowning, was struggling. She soldiered bravely on, inspired by this unique moment.

The passage rose and fell, twisted and turned until at length we passed through the grand gallery into the main chamber. It was…well, a chamber; devoid of any decoration, indeed devoid of any point of interest whatsoever. I wouldn’t say I was crushed with disappointment but I’d be a liar if I said it wasn’t an anti-climax. Still, it was thrill enough to be inside a pyramid at all and we should’ve expected that anything of interest not long plundered by grave robbers would have been plundered by Egyptologists.

Back out on the plateau Motas drove us to the highest point. The panorama across the hazy sprawl of Cairo to the stepped pyramid at Saqqarah, just visible as a black pimple on the horizon, offered a photo opportunity and the chance to contemplate what an awesome spectacle the three pyramids must have presented to the ancient people of Dahshur, a village on the Nile plain below. In their original condition the pyramids were encased in brilliant white limestone blocks cut so snugly that from a little distance each structure seemed shaped from a single stone. They were topped off with gold caps which reflected the rays of the afternoon sun in all directions, solar-powered immortality. It’s impossible to think about without hearing a drum roll in your head – or was that the throbbing in my temples?

We followed the road in a wide arc around the pyramids and down to the Sphinx. By this time Tess and I were just going through the motions and roundly cursing the delay in KL for our plight.

A leathery old guy wearing a tall turbanny looking thing on his head sidled up to us in the shadow of the Sphinx. He gestured to the pouch of tobacco in my shirt pocket with his long bony fingers.

“He wants a cigarette.” Gee, thanks Reba.

I agreed and Reba conducted some sort of negotiation with him in Arabic, then she turned to Tess.

“I will take your photo,” she said, and held out her hand for the camera. Reba snapped the three of us with the pyramids for a backdrop and the old guy wanted his fag. Tess offered him a B&H but he got all sniffy and grunted at my rollies. Intending to roll him the agreed price – he could lick the paper – I measured out the makin’s and began to roll. The old guy got stroppy and started waving his arms around.

“He wants the packet,” said Reba.

“I misunderstood,” I said, genuinely surprised. “This is all I’ve got left,” I added, genuinely lying. I shook my head. That wasn’t the deal as far as I was concerned; a fag for a photo, no problem but a packet, no way.

“He’s a tightarsed western worm,” Reba explained to the old bloke in his native tongue. “Take the cigarette and be happy to get that from the scumbag infidel.”

The old fellow huffed and puffed a bit then bared his teeth at us, spun around and marched away. Reba followed him and I saw her press a few notes into his hand from a wad she’d withdrawn from the inside pocket of her jacket. “I am sorry uncle, but these guys are losers,” I thought I heard her say, but I may have been hallucinating by this stage. Anyhow, thus did we witness baksheesh in practice before we’d been introduced to the theory.

Reba recited the history of the Sphinx and we hauled ourselves back into the bus. But we’d not seen the last of the Giza plateau – we would revisit it within the week.

No sooner had Motas taken to the road than Reba turned around and told us how much we wanted to go now to the Khan el Khalil, Cairo’s grand souk.

“It is very exciting,” she gushed. Her sudden enthusiasm suggested to me that this was the moment she’d been working up to all day. She had endured the last several hours in our unworthy company only so she could take us shopping. Perhaps she was hoping for a little token of our gratitude for her inestimable services? “I know a shop with perfumes and jewellery. It is wonderful…yes?”

No.

I swear that, for Reba, this was the very first time anyone had turned down the chance to visit one of the orient’s great bazaars. But we were well and truly beyond it, irretrievably out of it, and no amount of persuasion on her part could convince us to visit her cousin’s store so there’d be no commission for her today.

It was after five when we alighted at the El Gezirah and received our most valuable lesson of the day, courtesy Reba no less.

“It is our custom to show your appreciation to the driver,” she said batting her eyelids, as we slid the back door shut. That was baksheesh in theory. Here was baksheesh in practice: knowing he would drive us to the airport with Ahmood in the morning we slipped Motas a tenner. To Reba, who had treated us like imbeciles and we would never see again, we gave our unfelt thanks.

And on that note did our first 24 hours in Egypt draw to a close. At 7 we repaired to the riverfront restaurant for dinner. At 7.30 the staff found us face down in our babaghannush and stretchered us off to beddybyes.

Next Time: The Stuff of Legend...